Upgrading to 7 Professional on a multiboot

[himynameisminh]

Hi, I'm new to the forums and figured this would be the best place to ask my question. I've looked all over the internet for the past two days and have just looked through the tutorials on the forums but can't seem to find anything that would help me. Currently I'm running a multiboot with XP and Vista Business (64 bit) and wanted to get rid of XP altogether and just have a Vista/7 multiboot. I have a partition set up for XP with 20 gigs. I was wondering if it would be safe to force delete the volume so that I have free space to create a partition for the 7 upgrade from Vista?

 

[Jonathan_King]

Welcome!

Yes, you can just delete the XP partition, and install Windows 7 there.

Windows 7 will create a new boot loader on its partition, and add Vista to it's BCD.

Just a warning, 20GB is mighty small for a Windows 7 partition. You may want to consider buying a bigger hard drive.

 

[brady]

Like king said, 20GB could get you into some trouble down the line. Would suggest at least a 30GB partition for the OS and standards. Most programs can be installed to data partitions... but some can't.

 

[himynameisminh]

I can move space over (about 150GB hard drive). Right now it's set up so that the C drive is Vista, E is XP, and G is personal (with D being drivers for my laptop or things of the sort). Once I upgrade to 7, you said it creates a new boot loader, so will this mean that it will automatically create the multiboot for 7 and Vista for the next time I start up the system?

 

[Jonathan_King]

Yes, it does mean that. If everything goes okay, you will have no problems.

If for whatever reason it doesn't set up the multi-boot, you can manually add it using the free program EasyBCD.

 

[himynameisminh]

Ok and just a few more questions (sorry! I'm looking through tutorials as I'm keeping up with this). I've read that you can install from a virtual drive (I have the iso file but don't want to burn a dvd and I don't have my USB drive with me) but I am a little curious still. I would think that if I mounted it using daemon tools and did the installation straight from the virtual cd, as soon as the installation restarts the virtual drive would be lost? And also, I was looking at a tutorial (http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/5166-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-vista.html) and it said to perform a clean install if you wanted to install on a specific partition, but I wanted to upgrade so that all my files transferred. Will that be a problem or will I have to clean install in order to get it to install on the specific partition? (in this case E:\)

 

[Jonathan_King]

As soon as you rebooted, the virtual drive would be unmounted and it could not go on, so I don't think that will work.

What you could do is just copy all the files to the hard drive, and run the setup.exe file.

 

[himynameisminh]

Also, now that I'm looking at it (I had EasyBCD already installed), it says the drive for Windows XP is S:, but I'm almost certain it's on E:... Is there any way you could help me understand that?

 

[Jonathan_King]

Type diskmgmt.msc into the start menu and press enter.

That should tell you what you want to know.

 

[himynameisminh]

ok so if i extract the iso file onto another partition then it would work?

 

[Jonathan_King]

Yes, it should work.

 

[himynameisminh]

I'm sorry but I'm not sure what I'm looking for on the disk management window. I did notice that the S: drive is only 1.46 GB, which should mean that it is not the XP partition correct?

 

[Jonathan_King]

Correct.

Don't worry about EasyBCD at this point. If everything goes the way it should, you won't even need to use it.

 

[himynameisminh]

Ok, and (hopefully) the last question, I was looking at a tutorial (Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and Vista) and it said to perform a clean install if you wanted to install on a specific partition, but I wanted to upgrade so that all my files transferred. Will that be a problem or will I have to clean install in order to get it to install on the specific partition? (in this case E:\)

 

[Jonathan_King]

Well you cannot upgrade directly from XP to 7. In theory, you could upgrade from XP to Vista, then from Vista to 7, but it is not recommended. You'd be better off just doing a clean install.

If you install on the XP partition without formatting, you data will be saved automatically in a folder called Windows.old, in the root directory of C.

 

[himynameisminh]

Well currently I use Vista as my main OS and would be installing from Vista, I just wanted to delete XP as I have no need for it anymore. Does the fact that XP is installed mean I cannot perform an upgrade from Vista Business to 7 Professional?

 

[Jonathan_King]

If you are performing an upgrade, it will be installed on top of your Vista partition. You will not be able to install to the XP partition unless you do a clean install: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/31402-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html

 

[himynameisminh]

Ok, so if I decide to perform a clean install as opposed to an upgrade, I would be able to keep Vista as a multiboot option, correct?

And also, if I formatted the partition E: (I don't need anything on that particular drive) and installed 7 on E:, the other drives (C:, G would stay the same and retain all of my files, correct?

 

[Jonathan_King]

Yep, everything is correct.

 

[himynameisminh]

Thank you very much for all your help! I'll format the partition now and get started on the installation then